“People say I’m an inspiration. They say if you can do it, I can do it. I feel great and I’m glad I can do something for myself as well as help other people.”

A former teacher’s aide and home health worker from Virginia, Gregory Stratton says he enjoys the security, convenience and camaraderie of life at Northgate II where he has lived since the 1980s. “You don’t have to worry about security or maintenance. If something breaks, management comes in and fixes it. And the building provides more activities for the residents than any other facility I know of.”

It was Northgate II’s first Chronic Disease Self-Management workshop, held in the fall of 2013, that inspired Mr. Stratton to get back on track with his health. “The workshop went through a lot of stuff that I knew already, but it was a good refresher. I realized I needed to do some things differently. For example, I had been a little lax in terms of taking my medication. The workshop helped me realize I needed to consult my doctors when I wanted to change my medication.”

About a year ago, Mr. Stratton also set some other wellness goals for himself: “I came to realize I needed to lose weight. I just made a choice. I changed my diet. I stopped eating a lot of red meat. I stopped eating pastries, which is hard because I do a lot of baking. The problem is I wouldn’t just cook it, I would eat what I baked. I could eat a whole sweet potato pie in a day. Last September, I weighed 258 pounds and now I’m around 215 pounds. I should be around 200.”

This Spring, Stratton decided to share what he’d learned in achieving his own health goals. “I started a wellness support group. People say I’m an inspiration. They say if you can do it, I can do it. I feel great and I’m glad I can do something for myself as well as help other people.”

Some 8 to 12 people participate in Stratton’s weekly wellness support group, which picks a topic to research and discuss. Recently, the group talked about the importance of proper hydration and the dangers of excess sugar consumption. Says Stratton: “I told everyone what icing was made of. Right after we met, we had a community dinner scheduled, and I was glad to see that everyone in the support group took the icing off the cupcakes that we were offered.”

In this section

Northgate II Wellness Program

Our wellness program is at the forefront of a national movement to integrate housing with supportive wellness services in low-income settings as part of an innovative effort to contain healthcare costs.

Climbing Mount Laurel

The Struggle for Affordable Housing and Social Mobility in an American Suburb — Published by Princeton University Press